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Old Man Willies Lite


fae_alba

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So I tried to install the lite rig on Old Man Willies. I followed the steps, honest I did. But it seems that much of the controls or constraints didn't come along for the ride. Is there some way to do a quick re-install into an existing character or should I simply start back at square one? I've added a bunch of other bones (fans, beard) that would be a real pain to recreate, but if I have to I have to.

 

I've attached the model if any are willing to peruse my errors....

 

OldManWillies_Boned_RiggedV2c_LiteRigged.mdl

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The first thing you should do is make a backup of your current model.

 

Then fix his left arm. At the moment it is angled down. It should be a perfect mirror of his right arm (straight out in a "T" pose). Make sure you are looking from the FRONT view in the Model Window. Click on the Left Bicep bone and hit [R] to bring up the Rotate manipulator. Hold down the [Alt] key while dragging the Green handle on the Rotate manipulator. This will move the CPs as well as all the children of the bicep. When the left arm looks like a perfect mirror of the right arm, switch to TOP view. Hold down the [Alt] key while dragging the Red handle on the Rotate manipulator. Rotate the bone until the fingers are aligned with the white finger control bones.

 

Then you should delete the rotoscopes. If you ever delete or move the original rotoscope images, AM still references them in the model file and they will show up as empty rotoscope containers in all the projects you use this model in, but you will be unable to delete those references in AM. You will have to open the model file up in a text editor to remove them permanently. So it is a good idea to always delete all rotoscopes from your model once you are done with them.

 

Then, in the Bones folder, Delete the "Body Controls" null and everything under it.

You can keep "Body Bones" and all the bones under it. You don't have to delete those.

 

Then open the the model's User Properties and delete all those user properties/relationships except for the "Pupil_dilation" relationship. That one is not part of the LiteRig. It looks like you will have to delete the Custom Constraints relationship as well.

 

Then open the Relationships folder and delete everything in there except for the "Pupil_dilation Relationships" folder.

 

Save your model.

 

Now save a copy of this model - just in case ...

 

Then open your original LiteRig project file (the one you downloaded from the forum) and save a copy under a different name.

 

In this *copy* of the LiteRig project, right-click on the "Bones" model and choose "Save As" - and save it as something like "bones_temp" or whatever.

 

In the "bones_temp" model, delete all the bones. But don't delete any of the relationships/poses.

 

Save the "bones_temp" model and close the project.

 

Open the Old Man Willies model that you just cleaned up.

 

In the PWS, right-click on the model and choose Import > Model ... and choose the "bones_temp" model you saved.

 

All the relationships from the "bones_temp" model will be imported into your model.

 

Now, follow the instructions starting at "Installing The Controls".

 

Hopefully that will work :)

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Click on the Left Bicep bone and hit [R] to bring up the Rotate manipulator. Hold down the [Alt] key while dragging the Green handle on the Rotate manipulator. This will move the CPs as well as all the children of the bicep

 

I have to use CTRL key with any of the manipulators to move the cps with the bone. ALT key doesn't seem to do anything (for me).

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Well I'm totally flumuxed! I tries Homeslice's instructions, and wound up back at where I started...nuts! I'll beat this bugger, but I fear I'll have to scrub the model down to no bones or anything else and starting over. If anybody would like to have a go here is the model..

 

btw, before anybody gets all prais-ey over my modeling prowess, allow me to place this disclaimer: Old Man Willies is based largely on Sir Nigel. I played Dr. Frankenstein and pieced the model together using Sir Nigel's head, hands from here, teeth from over there..etc. I then tweaked, moved cp's to taste, modeled boots, pants etc.

 

Anyhoo, had to give creds where due

 

OldManWillies_Boned_RiggedV2d_LiteRiggedFinal.mdl

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The first thing that I notice when I bring him into an action is that you probably want to have IK legs default to ON, and probably want Hide extra bones ON. Do that in the model user properties and save it

 

After doing that - there seem to be some cps not attached to any geometry bones, and you can do some better weighting. I didn't look to see if the geometry bones are placed correctly

 

I don't think you'll have to start from scratch if you do the above - but you will then be able to see what's not working for you.

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I took a quick look at your model, here are a few things I noticed: The normals on both hands and the left boot were pointing the wrong way. The right hand pinky's bones had their roll handles facing the wrong way which makes them go wrong with the gizmo. I would put a fan bone in each knee and elbow and re-arrange those splines a bit (See right side of model I attached). You could carry on with what you have and fix everything. However, I think you will be making life harder on yourself because the model is not symmetrical. That means you will not be able to mirror smart skins or muscle poses (if you even use any). You may be better off either re-copy/flip/attaching most of it or using a plug-in like mirror splines. It isn't too hard to re-rig and it gets easier every time you do it.

oldman.mdl

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btw, before anybody gets all prais-ey over my modeling prowess, allow me to place this disclaimer: Old Man Willies is based largely on Sir Nigel. I played Dr. Frankenstein and pieced the model together using Sir Nigel's head, hands from here, teeth from over there..etc. I then tweaked, moved cp's to taste, modeled boots, pants etc.

 

I've come to call that technique "Frankenspleening."

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I took a quick look at your model, here are a few things I noticed: The normals on both hands and the left boot were pointing the wrong way. The right hand pinky's bones had their roll handles facing the wrong way which makes them go wrong with the gizmo. I would put a fan bone in each knee and elbow and re-arrange those splines a bit (See right side of model I attached). You could carry on with what you have and fix everything. However, I think you will be making life harder on yourself because the model is not symmetrical. That means you will not be able to mirror smart skins or muscle poses (if you even use any). You may be better off either re-copy/flip/attaching most of it or using a plug-in like mirror splines. It isn't too hard to re-rig and it gets easier every time you do it.

 

Man, Hutch, tough love! I've had the sneaking suspicion that my bad splinig habits would come back to haunt me, and started to draw and quarter poor old man willies last night. While the lack of a symmetrical model will be an issue down the road, it's not the rigging issue I have right now. It may be my simple lack of awareness with the rig (actually that most likely is the issue) but the biggest example of my problems is that the hip null seems to have no effect on the model in a chor. If I grab a hold of the hip null, and move it down, I would expect the knees to bend, the old man to groan because of his aching joints,etc. But what in fact happens is his feet go straight into the ground and the knees do not bend at all....rather disconcerting to the old coot.

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btw, before anybody gets all prais-ey over my modeling prowess, allow me to place this disclaimer: Old Man Willies is based largely on Sir Nigel. I played Dr. Frankenstein and pieced the model together using Sir Nigel's head, hands from here, teeth from over there..etc. I then tweaked, moved cp's to taste, modeled boots, pants etc.

 

I've come to call that technique "Frankenspleening."

 

Glad I'm not the only one...while I'm not totally without talent, sometimes modeling, especially human-oid like characters befuddles me. I'd rather get on to telling the story than get overly frustrated with the modeling/rigging part. My bent is more to the writing, directing , producing side of things, but since I'm going this one alone I must soldier on.

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It may be my simple lack of awareness with the rig (actually that most likely is the issue) but the biggest example of my problems is that the hip null seems to have no effect on the model in a chor. If I grab a hold of the hip null, and move it down, I would expect the knees to bend, the old man to groan because of his aching joints,etc. But what in fact happens is his feet go straight into the ground and the knees do not bend at all....rather disconcerting to the old coot.

 

That is why I said in my previous post that you have to turn IK legs ON (hip null will then be effective, knees will bend, etc) as well as turn Hide extra bones ON (so that you don't grab the wrong bones/controls). The poses are located in the user properties/body rig section.

 

After you do that it will be easier to see the remaining things that need to be done (eg cp's that didn't get assigned, better weighting, etc).

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Sorry if I was overly critical. I wasn't trying to beat you up. Since Nancy had already answered your question about the rig I just thought I would bring up those issues to hopefully make it easier on you down the road.

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It may be my simple lack of awareness with the rig (actually that most likely is the issue) but the biggest example of my problems is that the hip null seems to have no effect on the model in a chor. If I grab a hold of the hip null, and move it down, I would expect the knees to bend, the old man to groan because of his aching joints,etc. But what in fact happens is his feet go straight into the ground and the knees do not bend at all....rather disconcerting to the old coot.

 

That is why I said in my previous post that you have to turn IK legs ON (hip null will then be effective, knees will bend, etc) as well as turn Hide extra bones ON (so that you don't grab the wrong bones/controls). The poses are located in the user properties/body rig section.

 

After you do that it will be easier to see the remaining things that need to be done (eg cp's that didn't get assigned, better weighting, etc).

 

I will have to go back and check these settings out..I could have sworn that I did turn on those settings....

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So I've cleaned up some of the spinning, re-rigged the old man, and did a quick test, really just to see how the basic lite rig behaves. The only optional rigging done is a dynamic constraint and a null on the beard to see how that behaves. I now will go in and throw in some fans at the joints and cp weighting. One big issue that I need to answer is some sort of collision detection on the beard so I don't have to keep checking that it doesn't disappear into the old man's chest.

 

Check it out, give me your thoughts.

 

arm_rig_test.mov

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On my valkyrie I had to add a really dense mesh in front of her chest to keep her braids from going thru. I hid it after simulating because transparent stuff still occludes with AO but if you wont be using AO you can just make it transparent.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Ok, so I've forged ahead and added the Lite Face Rig to Old Man Willies. I've gotten to the point of exporting the model, but when I do the export AM crashes. I've tried several times, and always get the same result. I've attached the project with the model embedded if any of you would care to diagnose and tell me were I went Oh So Horribly Wrong.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Lite_Face_OldManWillies_Embedded.zip

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I don't think you can have any smartskins in your model when you export from an Action. If you have smartskins, you will probably have to delete them. If you don't have any smartskins in your model, you may want to make a copy of your model, delete all the dynamic constraint stuff, and try exporting that one. If that still causes AM to crash ... I guess we'll tackle that when we get there ...

------------------------------------------------------

Or you can skip the export step and place the "control" nulls manually.

All the export action does is to automatically place the small "control" nulls (the nulls with "control" in their name) exactly at the tips of the corresponding bones. It is not really difficult to position them yourself. It is just a little tedious.

To find out which control null goes where:

Make a copy of the LiteFace project.

Make an empty model with no geometry.

Import the face bones and go through the rigging process to export the model. This should be very fast because you don't have any geometry or CP assignments to worry about.

Open the exported model in a new project and enter Bones Mode to see the bones and nulls.

Open your Old Man Willies model in the same project and use the empty model as reference to manually place all the nulls with "control" in their name.

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I don't think you can have any smartskins in your model when you export from an Action. If you have smartskins, you will probably have to delete them. If you don't have any smartskins in your model, you may want to make a copy of your model, delete all the dynamic constraint stuff, and try exporting that one. If that still causes AM to crash ... I guess we'll tackle that when we get there ...

------------------------------------------------------

Or you can skip the export step and place the "control" nulls manually.

All the export action does is to automatically place the small "control" nulls (the nulls with "control" in their name) exactly at the tips of the corresponding bones. It is not really difficult to position them yourself. It is just a little tedious.

To find out which control null goes where:

Make a copy of the LiteFace project.

Make an empty model with no geometry.

Import the face bones and go through the rigging process to export the model. This should be very fast because you don't have any geometry or CP assignments to worry about.

Open the exported model in a new project and enter Bones Mode to see the bones and nulls.

Open your Old Man Willies model in the same project and use the empty model as reference to manually place all the nulls with "control" in their name.

 

Thanks for the reply! I did a little more digging in the forums and found that you had posted a newer lite face rig and instructions (I had the old one downloaded some time ago). Using that rig I was able to get it installed and am now on to your great smart skinning tut. One thing I did notice on the rig; after exporting it, then opening the model, was that some of the control nulls were sized incredibly large. I had to select each and manually size them down. But other than that things progress.

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some of the control nulls were sized incredibly large.

Did those nulls have "Master" in their name? I made the "Master" nulls larger than the "Control" nulls so it woul dbe easier to select them when animating, but making them smaller shouldn't hurt anything. Glad you got it working :)

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  • 4 weeks later...

So the saga continues with Old Man Willies and the Lite Rig. I've gotten the Lite Face rig installed, added cp weighting etc. I decided to take it for a test run and check how the control nulls behaved, so I created a new action and played with the eye lid master. I noticed that the eyelid master is not moving the inner and outer upper eyelids at the same rate, with the outer bone moving much more than the inner.

 

head_shot0.png

 

Is there a way to adjust how much the inner bone moves with the null??

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  • 2 weeks later...

The saga continues...or "just when I think I'm making progress".

 

So I was messing with Old Man Willies and the LiteFace rig. And I noticed that when I enable the Face Constraints pose, the poor guys face gets well, all messed up. Turning the pose back off does not set it back.

 

Below is a before and after.

 

 

 

the project for any who may wish to give the old man a face lift!

 

 

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  • 1 month later...

I've been road testing the Lite rig and have run into an issue with Old Man Willie's hands. When I rotate the thumb it curls downwards but not in towards the palm like it needs to. I thought I set the thumb a bone's roll handle properly. Here's a screen grab of my issue.

 

 

 

Any thoughts on how to get the thumb to curl like it should would be most helpful.

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I thought I set the thumb a bone's roll handle properly.

The word "properly" is a relative term here. The proper Z rotation for the thumb's geometry bones differs a little from model to model, depending on how the thumb is modeled.

Until you get a feel for how the thumb bones should be rotated in different models, you just have to experiment.

One tip though, make sure all the thumb geometry bones in a thumb have the exact same Z rotation. That may not be your problem, but it is worth repeating.

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I thought I set the thumb a bone's roll handle properly.

The word "properly" is a relative term here. The proper Z rotation for the thumb's geometry bones differs a little from model to model, depending on how the thumb is modeled.

Until you get a feel for how the thumb bones should be rotated in different models, you just have to experiment.

One tip though, make sure all the thumb geometry bones in a thumb have the exact same Z rotation. That may not be your problem, but it is worth repeating.

 

Damn Homeslice, not only was your reply quick, but spot on. I'll consider your advice as a b'day present to me! Thanks!

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